SPONSORED BY 40 KNOTS VINEYARD AND ESTATE WINERY
Project Watershed is a perennial leader in environmental initiatives in the Comox Valley.
Project Watershed was established in 1993 by a small group of local citizens concerned by declining fish stocks, water quality and rapid urban development in local watersheds.
The group of citizens took it upon themselves to become stewards of every watershed, from Oyster River, to Deep Bay Cove.
Past and ongoing projects include:
• The Comox Valley Salmon Streams Stewardship Project (1999-2005) focused on developing stewardship of sensitive fish and wildlife habitat on private land in the Comox Valley.
• K’ómoks Estuary Work – restoring the K’ómoks Estuary to its “former glory.”
• Streamkeepers and Wetlandkeepers Courses (1993-ongoing), which offers people basic skills of monitoring aquatic habitats and getting involved in local volunteer driven watershed projects.
• The Baynes Sound Stewardship Initiative (BSSI) (1995-2000), which includes such provects as the “State of the Sound” GIS project, as well as educational materials and action projects focused on non-point source pollution and remediation efforts.
Project Watershed’s ongoing habitat stewardship efforts are well documented, and in 2017, the Comox Valley Project Watershed Society took on a brave new challenge, with the efforts to purchase and restore the former Field Sawmill site on the Courtenay River near the 17th Street Bridge.
The project, dubbed Kus-Kus-Sum, in commemoration of an ancestral First Nations village that was situated in the area, will be a crowning achievement for the Society.
The entire project will cost about $6.5 million, including restoration, which is a few years down the road. The society has raised $140,000 from the community for land acquisition. It will soon receive another $400,000 from the Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program, which will bump the total to $587,000.
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